Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/07/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Thank you Brian, I was looking for unusual circumstances as Tina was having a fairly rapid failure rate on her hardware. I am sure that her drives are in an air conditioned environment which would limit heat and humidity issues unless the drives were used in a south facing window with no blinds and Tina works in an 85F environment to save electricity which I strongly doubt. Don don.dory@gmail.com On 7/21/05, Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> wrote: > It is extremely difficult (though not impossible) for software problems to > cause disk failures. Normally when you have a software-related disk > problem, the issue is that the data get written incorrectly to the disk, > or else are read incorrectly back from it. A crashed disk, one needing > physical replacement, has something electrical or physical wrong with it. > There is 1 chance in a million that this kind of failure is caused by > software issues of any kind. > > It is also quite difficult (maybe 1 chance in 50,000) for the main > computer hardware to do something that breaks disks. This is especially > true when those disks are connected by USB or FireWire. When disks fail > and need replacement, it is because something physical has changed inside > the disk. > > It is very unlikely that electrical power phenomena can cause disk > failure. This is because the electric power is not used directly by the > disk. The mains voltage is converted to low-voltage DC, and that converted > power is used to operate the disk. If there is an anomaly of some kind on > the electric power mains, the power supply itself is usually what fries. I > would offer odds of 1 in 200,000 that a power mains event damaged a disk > without damaging at least one other part of the computer, > usually the power supply. > > The most common problems are heat, humidity, and manufacturing defects. > Heat can really trash a disk. Humidity is not quite as bad as heat, but > the combination of heat and humidity can be deadly. > > Other problems are vibration and dust. When a disk is turned off, it is > very rugged and quite immune to dust. When it is turned on, it requires an > environment that is free of vibration and dust, to say nothing of heat and > moisture. > > So don't expect a software upgrade, or even the replacement of your > computer itself, to solve a problem that is causing disks to be damaged. > It's very much more likely that the damage is caused by the abovementioned > environmental factors and not by malicious signals or bad electricity > being transmitted to the disk over its connecting wires. > > Brian > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >